Father Jerome Murphy-OConnor has a common sense breakdown....let's hope it's brief

Father Jerome Murphy-OConnor, a renowned expert on the New Testament, has what some are referring to as "a bold view of what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane."  I would call it something else entirely: asinine.  Demonic even.  How about blasphemous?

In an article for the Catholic Herald which may be found here, Fr. OConnor is quoted as having said that Jesus suffered a "nervous breakdown" and adds, "When realizing the imminence of His own demise, Jesus was deeply distraught and troubled, out of control."  A nervous breakdown, otherwise referred to as a "mental breakdown," is statically defined as "a specific acute time-limited reactive disorder."  See here.

Jesus out of control?  Jesus so distraught that he momentarily suffered from a reactive disorder?

Anyone even remotely familiar with the New Testament knows full well that Jesus was subject to emotions.  We know that He wept when His friend Lazarus died.  We know that He experienced various emotions.  We read for example, "He began to grow sorrowful and be sad" (Mt 26: 37); that He "began to fear and be heavy" (Mk 14: 33); that He "looked round about on them with anger" (Mk 3: 5) and that He said, "I am glad for your sake" (Jn 11: 15).  But Jesus was also free from concupiscence.  As a result, His emotions could not be directed to a sinful object nor could they arise within Him without His consent.  Jesus emotions were always completely under the control of His will and could never obscure or dominate His mind in any way.

Father Kenneth Baker, S.J., notes how, "In this regard there is a significant difference between His emotions and ours.  For, our emotions arise spontaneously, often against our will, and sometimes totally dominate our power of reason.  Thus, they can lead us into sin.  Not so with Jesus.  Jesus was capable of suffering and experienced emotions, but everything was under the control of His will which was totally obedient to His Father." (Fundamentals of Catholicism, Vol. II, p. 269).

This is the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae:

"Since the soul gives form to the body soul and body share the same existence, and when the body is upset by physical suffering the soul existing in the body is also indirectly affected.  So because Christ's body could suffer and die, his soul too was affected by suffering.  The soul is also affected, in a different sense, by activities it exercises by itself, or that belong more to it than the body.  Knowledge and sensation are sometimes called affections of the soul, but the description applies most properly to emotions of the sense-appetite, which Christ possessed along with everything else natural to men.  But whereas in us emotions often bear on unlawful objects, frequently anticipate the judgment of reason, and sometimes draw reason after them, in Christ they were always under reason's control."

And so, Father Murphy-OConnor is simply wrong.  Jesus suffered no mental breakdown.  He was never, even for the slightest moment, "out of control."

Would that we could say the same about Father.

Signs: Food Prices Soaring

In an article entitled, "Expect The Unexpected, Including Time Of Rage As Nation Threatened With 'Uproar'," Michael Brown wrote: "As we continue our little series on prophecy and expecting the unexpected: I'm asked often what I think is "coming" and when it might come and I have been careful to express the viewpoint that major events loom but I have always stayed away from a strict timeline. The first time I wrote a book on prophecy was The Final Hour in 1992 and it concluded that our era is ending and that there will be a major change "between now and 2040." I think that's still true and have been able to expand upon it in what is the companion book to The Final Hour, released last week as Tower of Light, which takes matters a step further. I am going to let the book speak for itself. The contents will be kept in book form. But let me expand on something that was on this website, this notion of expecting the unexpected. Two weeks ago I wrote about how something like disappearance of honeybees, which we would not anticipate as a "chastisement," could have a dramatic effect. We rely on these creatures to pollinate thirty percent of our crops.



In the same way, we forget how delicate our infrastructure is. Such comes to mind as the price of gasoline skyrockets. Could a major shift in the availability of energy provoke huge disturbances? Might we be in for societal disturbances such as what we saw at Virginia Tech -- but for different reasons and on a larger scale?
Without prayer, without massive conversion, this is precisely the direction in which we are headed. A societal breakdown. A collapse of infrastructure.

Are we facing a time when the rule of law will break down? An economic or natural disaster could spark it -- as happened on a smaller scale in the aftermath of hurricanes like Katrina. Might we be in for a time when there be ethnic violence? Will resentments harbored by various factions break out into a chaotic form of civil warfare? Roving bands of miscreants could cause a huge disruption that would tear at the very fabric of the nation.

I feel called to mention that. Such is the fate of a country that has forsaken belief. Just yesterday, a 91-year-old was beaten mercilessly in a carjacking in Detroit. Meanwhile, an estimate says that by 2050, a billion will be displaced worldwide by climate shifts. Right now, instead of conversion, there are signs of an intolerance toward Christianity that is nothing short of startling. A worker is fired for hanging a picture of Jesus in his own cubicle. A student is not allowed to have a Christian t-shirt (although Harry Potter, or demonic rock stars, are allowed). At Virginia Tech itself, a spiritual convocation in the wake of the shootings stayed conspicuously away from direct mention of Christ! Cho mentioned Jesus more than the preachers did.



And so can come mayhem. Such may arrive by way of radical terrorist Muslims or bands of the alienated.
Our failure to help third-world nations transform into modern ones -- to develop supplies of water, to develop hygiene -- may now bring immigrants from those downtrodden nations to our doorstep (and lead one day to uprisings). Without God, factions could find themselves at odds with newcomers.

Or there can be disputes over water. Regions from the southwest may vie with those around the Great Lakes. Might the U.S. one day find itself split into several federations? If nothing else, shooting outbreaks could spread in the same way that Virginia Tech was followed by threats at others schools (causing dozens to lock down in California alone and a shooting at NASA). Strange are our times when a female astronaut is arrested for trying to abduct another astronaut just weeks before.

We have celebrities who murder. We have movies that show how to cause mayhem. Years ago, we had an article on Dr. Howard Storm, a former atheist and college professor who underwent a dramatic conversion when he "died" from a ruptured duodenum (while leading a tour of Paris art museums) and found himself in a foggy corridor on the way to what he believes was hell.

When this atheist finally called out to God, a Light came and drew him out of the pit. Dr. Storm found himself in the company of angels who supposedly showed him the future of our country. The professor -- who is now a protestant minister, and also a missionary in Belize (he has built three Catholic churches there) -- claims he was told by the angels that there would come a time during this century when America would be broken down into a peasant way of life. "I asked how [purification] would come about, and they said it would be simple, that our society is very dependent on a lot of very fragile things -- energy grid, transportation," he intoned. "In each geographical area of the United States people used to be relatively self-sufficient as far as agricultural products. Now, how long would any state survive without the transport of food and energy?

"What would happen is these very complex and delicate grids of our economic system would begin to break down. We've created a society of such cruel and self-centered people that the very nature of civilization would begin to break down. They (the angels) showed me that what would happen is that people would begin robbing the grocery stores, hoarding goods, and killing one another for gasoline and tires, and as a consequence everything would break down and would end up in chaos."

The word we get here is "uproar." There will be upheaval. There is always upheaval in the absence of the Prince of Peace. There is also upheaval when we turn against life, as with the birth rates. Although previously reserved about a timetable (saying that the events he saw would occur over a century or two), Reverend Storm says in a new video interview that he has a growing sense of urgency. He isn't quite ready to wear a sandwich sign proclaiming the end. But he too senses change.

"I think we'll find it even with what's happening to gasoline," he told me yesterday (5/14/07). "Now that it's more than three dollars a gallon, things will be changing. Everything is going to be changing. "I don't think this country is going in the right direction. I don't think that it has responded appropriately to God for the blessings it received. We are consistently moving away from God. If we went out to the rest of the world and acted in a Christ-like manner, we would not have problems with terrorists."



That is Dr. Storm's take. Time frames? No one can really get into that. But sometimes we feel "pushed" by the Holy Spirit. The Final Hour was interesting because one morning when I was writing it I suddenly "heard" the words, "You shall call this book 'The Final Hour,'" (in my head, not my ears). It was an odd notion because I never thought of such a title for this book (about apparitions of the Blessed Mother) and had no intention of such a "sensational" title! I shook my head, went back to writing, and heard the words again. You shall call this book 'The Final Hour.' And I rejected it again. Then I "heard" it a third time. It was about 7:30 a.m., and shortly I was on my way to Mass. I had all but forgotten the "title" suggestion -- having rejected it as too "apocalyptic."

The Mass reading that day took me aback. It was from 1 John 2:18: "Children, it is the final hour; just as you heard that the anti-christ was coming, so now many such antichrists have appeared. This makes us certain that it is the final hour." I got the same "word" on my current book, Tower of Light. It just came out of nowhere. That should not have surprised me. For it is the follow up, the other bookend, to The Final Hour and a book that I hope inspires prayer." (Article here).

According to a very disturbing report, food prices will soon spiral out of control.  The result will, of course, be societal chaos.  Our Lady has warned that America would know the hour of poverty and defeat because of its refusal to accept God's Law of Love and to follow His Commandments.  The handwriting is now on the wall for this country, for a nation which slaughters the innocent unborn and promotes a multitude of evils including sodomy:

"You have defied the Lord of Heaven, you have had the vessels from His Temple brought to you, and you, your noblemen, your wives and your singing women have drunk your wine out of them.  You have praised gods of gold and silver, of bronze and iron, of wood and stone, which cannot either see, hear or understand; but you have given no glory to the God Who holds your breath and all your fortunes in His hands.  That is why He has sent the hand which, by itself, has written these words.  The writing reads: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin.  The meaning of the words is this: Mene, God has measured your sovereignty and put an end to it; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting; Parsin, your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians." (Daniel 5: 23-28).

Explosive report issued by the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Institute

Report cites the prospect of a breakdown of order in the United States. Read full text here (pdf file).